Monday, February 14, 2011

Third graders will be doing just that soon, following their biography wax museum project. We introduced biography right after winter break, discussing the project for language arts classes and the famous people that students remembered seeing in last year's wax museum. I discussed where the biography section was in our school library, how to search using the catalog, and how to best utilize the public library if a book was unavailable in our school. During the following class, we looked at Jerry Pinkney's work, wrapping up our unit on fables, and reviewing tall tales, and we looked at Brian Pinkney's biography: Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King. We also looked at how to search for more reading material on their selected person on reliable websites. During the next class, I introduced the online encyclopedia as a tool for more information AND as a tool to create timelines for the selected person's life. Following that, we elaborated more on biographies of famous slaves during the time of the underground railroad; focusing on two Caldecott honor books from illustrator Kadir Nelson: "Henry's Freedom Box" and "Moses", a story of Harriet Tubman. Next up is a lesson in preparation of Read Across America, a celebration of Dr. Seuss' birthday on March 2nd. Naturally, in keeping with the biography unit, we will discuss "The Boy on Fairfield Street", a biography of Dr. Seuss. From there, we will begin to look at the third grade centric books of our visiting author, Debbie Dadey, whose visit is quickly approaching April 2nd. Time sure does fly when you're having fun!